America's Past
The Story of Virginia's First Century. By Mary Newton Stanard. (Lippincott. 21s.)
cott. 600
Tim. Englishman, indeed the European, in America to-day has the curious sensation of being on a continent which lacks one dikrension—and that dimension is of course the fourth, the diinension of time. In Detroit, in Chicago, even in New York, there is no past ; and the future is shrouded no less than else- where, so that the present moment is all existence. But if a step is taken south from Washington, we find ourselves in Vir- ginia, and there at once the missing dimension is restored. Virginia visibly, even obtrusively, has a past. As one drives aking her roads,'one sees on every side delightful and elegant eighteenth centtiri country' houses. Her bridges have little notice boar(1.4 affixed to them which tell one that here, in 1614 or thereabout, Lord Delaware granted a plot of land to a settler, or Captain Smith fought an action with the Indians. Indeed, Virginia, until recently at any rate, has lived very much in her past. The civil war brought economic ruin. To-day, however, she is recovering.
Krs. Stanard, a pious inhabitant of Richmond, has now compiled a noteworthy history of the first hundred years of the colony's existence. The volume is a handsome one, - beautifully illustrated, and the story is fascinating. Mrs. Stanard relies chiefly on the narrative of William Strachey, the first secretary of the Colony, for. information shout the first settlement. William Strachey, a direct ancestor of Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey,.the late editor and pro- prietor of the Spectator, sailed for the colony in ' The Sea Venture,' on June 2nd, 1609, but disaster attended his voyage. ' The Sea Venture ' was shipwrecked and the men cast away on an island in the Bermudas. Strachey, who appears to have been' a literary character, wrote an account of the voyage, the storm, shipwreck, and the ship's company's life on the unin- habited island.
A more important work of Strachey's from Mrs. Stanard's point of view, however, was his book on the colony, and Mrs. Sfanard quotes liberally from this document. On May 10th, 1610, Strachey, with his -Governor Gates who had been ship- wrecked on The Sea Venture' with him, managed to reach the mainland in two vessels which they had built for them- selves in the Bermudas. But they found that the colony, which had been first settled a few years before, was in ruins. Of the five hundred original settlers, there were only about sixty left, the rest having died from disease or starvation, or at the hands of the Indians. A terrible picture is given of the conditions and hardships which these early colonists had to go through :—
" It was lamentable to behold them run naked out of their beds, so emaciated that they looked like anatomies, cryeing outt, we are starved, we are starved.' Others who went to bed., as we imagined in health were found dead next morning. One Hugh PUBe. . • in a furious, distracted moode, did come openly into the market place Blaspheameinge, exclaimeinge and eryein,ge outt that there was noe god, for if there were he would not let his creatures Perish from starvation. . . . Viewing the Fort we found the Pal- headoes tome downe, tho Ports open, the Gates from off the hinges and emtie houses (whose Owners death had taken from them) rent up and burnt, rather than the dwellers would step into the Woods a stone's cast off from them for fire wood. . . . the Indian Pled as fast without, if our men stirred beyond the bounds of the Block House, as Famine and Pestilence did within. . . . In this desolation and misery our Governor found the condition and state of the Colonie . . with no hope how to amend it or save his owns company- and those yet remaining alive."
The successful settlement of Virginia was not really begun till Lord Delaware himself, who must have been a man of great ability, arrived on the-scene with adequate resources for the
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work. - We -have -little space -left- to -describe the lurid and chequered history of the colony during the next hundred years.
The Pocahontas episcide has, of course, become famous in romance.
-More historically important is the much-neglected fact that Virginia was the last land of all under the British flag to sur- render to the Commonwealth and that Charles 11. was pro-. cliaimed king there. It was not indeed till March 12th, 1652, that the colony surrendered. With the year 1699, Mrs. Stanard ends her book and she can claim by that time that Virginia had indeed made progress.
" The close of Virginia's First Century was the end of an era in more than a chronological .sense. Beginning with a little village within palisades, the Colony could now boast of twenty-three counties, several of them recently formed on account of the growth of population. Settled:lents,' sometimes containing only a few people had reached the head of tide water on all the rivers, and south of James River, colonists were steadily moving westward to new lands. The population, as given by Governor Andros in. 1697, was between 18,000 and 20,000 tithables, or approximately .; 60,000 people. Another guide to the number of inhabitants is i; the statement—doubtless made from muster rolls—that the militia. consisted of 2,020 horse and 8,274 foot."
Her last words contain the proud justified boast of the. Vir- ginian that her state has contributed an extraordinary high percentage of notables to American history :—
" At the end of Virginia's First Century the seeds had been planted from which was to flower the Virginia of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Madison, Marshall, Clark, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson."
Another book about the past of another part of America is Mr. Eberlein's suimptuous volume on the Manor Harries and historical homes of Long Island and Staten Island. Clams, ancestry, and sand are, he tells us, the three diversions of the Long Islander in winter, when the summer visitor has departed. The ancestral lore, as he points out, is genuine and the manor houses which sustain it are mostly very pleasant struc- tures. There are several beautiful illustrations and we are also given interesting sidelights on the interaction of the Dutch and the English settlers in and around Manhattan Island.
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